The mission was critical, and the task complex: Ushering a print publication like Rolling Stone, a Bondi publication, into the digital age by providing them with a turnkey solution to present their print magazine archives online, for viewing on high resolution-connected devices of all shapes and sizes. Unlike other digital versions of magazines on the market, the new platform would allow the publisher to monetize its own unique brand through the years.

The Challenge

AIS needed to address multiple technical areas to provide the most viable solution for Rolling Stone and other archives.

Speed

Scale

Security

Continuous Delivery

High-Definition Presentation

Rolling Stone’s existing solution (‘print to digital’) only supported 100 issues, and AIS was challenged to multiply the output tenfold while reducing management costs and allowing Rolling Stone the freedom to design their interface in a way that matched and enhanced their other digital presences.

Solution

AIS implemented a multi-tier solution in the creation of the Bondi Archive Platform. The platform we built consists of a flexible, scalable website architecture using HTML5, JavaScript, ASP.NET MVC and SQL Azure. The system allows viewers to see exact replicas of the original print issues, something not offered by any other platform. Users can navigate using a mouse, keyboard or touch and can zoom in or conduct complex searches. Bookmarking inside the archive is available as is print, based on the publisher’s preference.

Results

The new archive platform has allowed Rolling Stone to join the online revolution and bring their print content online in its original format and context, thereby retaining copyrights. By serving the content directly from their own website or from the cloud, the company can avoid content restrictions and fees imposed by third-party aggregation platforms and app stores. The project and platform has been an unequivocal success. Rolling Stone chose to enhance its print subscriptions by offering the full digital archive at no extra charge. By tightly integrating their online content with the digital archive, a deeper level of interaction with readership has been realized.

Our work with Rolling Stone and Bondi Digital Publishing is yet another example of how AIS can develop technology that creates new revenue streams for publishers. We built a digital distribution platform to usher print publications like Rolling Stone into the digital age – by providing them with a turnkey solution to deploy print magazine archives online for viewing on desktops, laptops and mobile devices. For Rolling Stone, the initial launch included more than 1,000 issues from 1967 to the present.

One of the most discussed concepts about authentication today is the concept of Single Sign-On, or SSO. SSO is the ability for a user to log into one location, and authenticate across several domains without entering any additional credentials. This saves the user from having to enter several credentials for related websites, as well as possibly prevent the user from having to remember multiple logins.

While developing the Rolling Stone and Vogue Archives, we needed a SSO system that could integrate our ASP.Net based archive with each provider’s existing authentication systems, primarily Apache-based web applications. Our solution was to develop a C# implementation of mod_auth_tkt cookie-and-token based authentication system, which we have since released open source.